Arkana from Arkansas. "My name is Igor Romanov. I am responsible for the international promotion of
Arkana Physical Research company. We're a young American company
established by a Russian physicist and American enthusiasts of hi-end
audio. Our activity is creating premium-class audio cables. We offer a full range of RCA/XLR interconnects,
speaker cables and power cords. All are divided
into 3 categories: good, better and best.
Having appropriate theoretical knowledge and experience, we created
absolutely unique technologies never before used for the transmission
of music signal. Our special know-how are conductors of different
rare-earth metals in different combinations. Based on data obtained over the course of our own
R&D spanning several years, we found that a certain
combination of rare-earth metal conductors and their
special properties minimize the negative impact on the
phase/frequency response of transmitted signal. Thus our cables
provide much more accurate signal transmission than
traditional metals like copper, silver and their alloys. For now we are
in the process of getting a US patent on our technology.
During our development we paid special attention to the quality and sonic
features of connectors to end up with only the best from Acoustic
Revive, WBT and Oyaide. Every Arkana cable is carefully handcrafted by our
experienced staff."

"For now we aren't ready to disclose the names of our metals
until the patent is granted. I can tell you that they
are all the well-known ones but have never been used as audio signal conductors before.
There are five metals combined with mutual properties. Our know-how is
their unique combinations depending on the type of cable and its
price range.
We have a long story of comparisons and here is a short list of
the most important ones:
Nordost
Odin Supreme Reference,
Valhalla Reference,
Tyr Analog and
Frey 2; Acrolink Mexcel, Premium and Special;
Kondo
KSL-LPz,
KSL-VzII and
KSL-SPz;
Argento
Flow Master Reference;
Siltech
Emperor Crown and
Ruby Hill II;
Crystal Cable
Absolute Dream;
NBS
Black Label II +;
Cardas
Clear and Clear Beyond;
Aural Symphonics
Prince and
Magic Gem v2;
Black Rhodium
Polar Cantata;
Stealth
Dream v10, Metacarbon and
Indra;
Elrod
Statement Silver and Gold;
Kubala-Sosna
Elation and Emotion.
Our evaluation systems included
Mark Levinson 31.5,
30.5,
30.6,
Gryphon Sonata Allegro and
Colosseum with
Focal JMLab Utopia II;
dCS Vivaldi,
VTL Siegfried and
TL 7.5 with
Verity Audio Amadis;
Boulder 1021, 1010 and
1060 with
Eggleston Works Andra III; simaudio Moon 650D and
Moon 600i with
Totem Wind;
Esoteric K-03,
G-01,
VAC Signature MKII, Esoteric A-02 and
Dynaudio Sapphire; and
Electrocompaniet EMC 1UP,
AN P2SE and
AN-E/SPe HE.

"All our conductors are pure metals without any further plating
or cladding.
On the basis of our ideas, each metal has its own sonic characteristic which
clearly appears in the transmission of a music signal. Sonic differences are determined by the type of crystal lattice, number of
electrons in the outer layer, atomic weight, density,
capacitance, inductance and other parameters. So each chemical
element has its own inherent sound. Copper will always
sound like copper, silver like silver and palladium like palladium. It should
be understood that any material processing might change certain details
but won't affect the basics. Let's call it the
natural resonances of the conductor*. Advanced metallurgical processes like deoxidation, casting
monomolecular structures, cryogenic processing, changing the geometry of
conductors as well as changing capacitance or inductance by
compressing or separating conductors may affect the sound of the
cable only within certain limits. And our conductors don't
require such treatments. Their purity and better dielectric is sufficient so no additional coatings or layers are used.
The designer's task is having the clear knowledge of the sonic features of his conductors and connectors to create the most
neutral frequency and phase response. Naturally cables also must
correspond to the level of the electronic components so Arkana cables
are produced in several price ranges.
Each Arkana cable has eight cores of 99.99% rare earth metals of 1mm diameter sleeved in their own Teflon insulation. The conductors are electrically
cleared, their surface is polished and they are arranged in parallel, neither twisted nor braided. Until
now we have released about 200 beta tester samples and our power cords meet all the NEC and LVC codes. And we're in the process of certification."

* Here those familiar with Franck Tchang of Acoustic System Intl. will detect common ground.

Given my 6-meter interconnects in the Villeneuve house, I asked about availability of such lengths. It turned out that about 2 meters were the limit for line-level connections. "Since we fully guarantee the superior sound quality of our product, Arkana's development team would need to first explore the entire range of related issues before we can approve the appropriateness of longer lengths and determine the necessary design features. Power cords are from 0.5 to 2.5 meters, speaker cable pairs are 1.5m, 2.0m or 2.5m. On the issue of pricing, due to the high cost of materials and connectors we acknowledge that our cables are not eligible for a low-end range.Retail prices for our most affordable Blue line start at $846 for the interconnect, $1'120 for the power cord and $1'605 for the speaker cable." Given my cable needs, I directed this assignment to our team. Glen Wagenknecht responded and Arkana Research arranged review loaners for him. Then Igor came back at me saying that they would be able to fabricate the lengths I needed after all. By then I'd moved house. Despite nearly twice the space, the new layout had shrunk my front-end-to-amp-stack distance to just 4m. This put me back in the rare-earth race without special conniptions. But Glen had already signed up. He'd thus do the main sonic commentary. I'd add a second opinion from my corner of the world for some 'more is merrier' math.

Against the often serpentine ways of hifi cables and their bloated pricing without apparent material counterpart, this promised to be a rare opportunity to investigate something actually novel in the field. Of course novel per se doesn't automatically equate to better. That jury was still out. But on doing something decidedly different, Arkana Research under the helm of their Russian chief engineer had already ticked off the requisite box. And with a name like theirs, who'd blame them for going a bit tongue-in-cheek Rosecrucian or Freemason on us with their website graphics and logo? Didn't Tara Labs once make the cable God listens to? Us lesser audio templars need cables too. As long as there was real science behind it—the naturally lower skin effect, capacitive and inductive values claimed for these metals—and demonstrable benefits from it all, a bit of surrounding fluff was the stuff which necessary distinction in the market place is made of.